Personally, my money's on AMD edging out Intel's current offerings. Why? This is AMD's last chance to be taken seriously in this market, if they fail they're doomed. If Intel loses the performance crown, they'll still be mega-profitable.

Personally, my money's on AMD edging out Intel's current offerings. Why? This is AMD's last chance to be taken seriously in this market, if they fail they're doomed. If Intel loses the performance crown, they'll still be mega-profitable.

My money is on Intel though. That's what I'll be buying end of the year.

Moshing

05-19-11, 05:37 PM

AMD will do well this round, even without taking the top honors. AMD and Intel have something of a balance achieved that both are actually benefiting from, neither will chance it destabilizing in either direction now. AMD no longer guns for the very top, but provides a solid and realistic alternative to Intel's CPU's, working a specific price range that Intel leaves a bit of a performance gap in, I would go so far as to say intentionally.

Intel needs AMD as much as AMD now needs Intel. They are wed-locked in a union of convenience that protects both of them from Big Brother scrutiny, and from smaller upstarts trying to muscle into the x86 market.

AMD isn't doomed at all. In fact, last time they hit a particular low financial point, Intel miraculously agreed to a settlement that boosted AMD into the black at a crucial moment when creditors were sniffing at their heals.

Edit: And if nobody's noticed, Intel and AMD have an obvious research agreement. AMD tests the more "potential pitfall" techs now and work the bugs out for Intel, then Intel whips out the same thing after it's been working for AMD for a bit but shinier, prettier, and more marketable. And if it doesn't work for AMD, Intel avoids it. AMD = Intel's guinea pig. A role AMD plays happily, and with often good results for both. Examples include, CISC/RISC encode/decoding, x86-64, Hyper Transport Tunneling/Quick Path Interconnect, Integrated Memory Controller, SATA3/USB3 (and many more examples, these just come to mind the quickest), every one of these Intel could have EASILY beaten AMD to, and Intel just seemed "uninterested" at the time with various BS marketing excuses. Be clear on this, there was NO lack of interest, quite the opposite. Intel was being kept in the tight loop with AMD's R&D teams, don't even doubt it.

Edit 2: So my bets are on Intel for top honors, with AMD for top value honors, again (and again, and again, etc., etc., ad nauseam). And even more stable of positions this time, well entrenched in both's advantages, once again locking out any real potential x86 competition from Via or anybody else and the FTC's hands completely tied to do anything about it. "AMD's an innovator! They beat Intel to many technologies, fair competition is in play!" So, my vote says "SnB-E will be the fastest x86 CPU you can own in late 2011/early 2012 unless Ivy Bridge hits in that time".

Edit 3: Possible issue for last edit statement. Ivy Bridge may launch as nothing more then a die-shrunk, socket 1155 chip with little real IPC improvements and not really compete with SnB-E at first. IvB-E may come later, like SnB-E did.

Edit4: Reference to CISC/RISC above, AMD's failed 5x86 was competing with the pure CISC original Pentium classic and losing badly. AMD bought NexGen and integrated the RISC core with a CISC encode/decode stage (first attempts were not pretty) well before Pentium Pro existed. Pentium Pro is Intel saying "good boy, chimpzilla, you found another path through the jungle!" And then blazing it's bloody trail through the IT world. Ever since, the Chipzilla/Chimpzilla monster combo have eaten any and all competition up and reign dominant over the whole jungle.

Viral

05-19-11, 09:26 PM

I don't think there will be a clear winner, AMD will likely do better at threaded tasks though. For price/performance, AMD should pull ahead by a good margin. Hopefully the performance will still be at least on par with Intel's offerings though in just about any meaningful application (not synthetic benches or calculating pi with an outdated program).

Unless they very much underwhelm, I can see myself going with an 8 core Zambezi sometime in the 2nd half of the year.

frenchy2k1

05-20-11, 01:31 PM

@Moshing, you realize that the x86 market is a close one, as it requires an x86 license to be compatible? Intel is the only one that doles out those and they have no interest to allow more competition.

The only 3 companies with those licenses are Intel (Duh...), AMD and VIA (bought it through Cyrix). So, no need to keep anyone from entering, the door is closed anyway.

Personally, my money's on AMD edging out Intel's current offerings. Why? This is AMD's last chance to be taken seriously in this market, if they fail they're doomed. If Intel loses the performance crown, they'll still be mega-profitable.

I doubt its this generation when AMD will become performance king. But their acquisition of ATI puts them in a much better position than Intel.

I think Zambezi will top the 2600K. But the Sandy Bridge E's will beat it later this year.

Intel17

05-20-11, 02:07 PM

You think 6C/12T SNB-E will beat out 8C/8T Zambezi?

Intel17

05-20-11, 02:08 PM

Yeah the 8 Core advantage might change a lot of benchmark results if the general performance is also good. Kinda similar to the 2GB VRAM per GPU route AMD used with their current generation of cards - very smart move, especially for demanding tests.

But this will be the first time I'm not going to be onboard with another core count increase. I just don't want an AMD chipset in one of my main systems.

But why would you buy SNB-E if the performance delta is not likely to be appreciable?

wheeljack12

05-29-11, 10:05 AM

You think 6C/12T SNB-E will beat out 8C/8T Zambezi?

isn't snb-e supposed to be 8 core too when it comes out? or at least some of the chips will be? if so, intel gets advantage back later this year. Until then, zambezi has the advantage until then.

Dazz

05-29-11, 10:25 AM

SB-E is 6 core, at the moment i think intel are not intrested in 8 core in the personal cosumer department only servers and workstations.

Ninja Prime

06-04-11, 07:42 PM

**EDITED BY DD**

Rollo

06-04-11, 08:24 PM

**EDITED BY DD**

Intel17

06-04-11, 08:44 PM

Rollo,

This thread is about CPUs. Why are you bashing AMD cards? AMD GPUs are great, NVIDIA GPUs are great. I'm glad they both exist and I'm glad I have choices.

Ninja Prime

06-04-11, 09:50 PM

Nah, you just posted FUD as usual, Ninja Slime.

More choices at more price points and configurations that match user's actual needs trumps "Here are our two options for anyone who wants more than 1GB" by a long shot. And let's not forget the 3GB GTX580s are the fastest single GPU cards on the planet and best suited forhigh end gaming in all forms. :)

Actually if you want to get into the ridiculous high end water cooled, phase change cooled, and LN2 cooled market, 6970s obliterate 580s because they can handle high overclocks. Just sayin'.

I think 3x2560x1600 panels is the only setup that uses more than 2gb in some games. Slawter is the only person I know of that has one of those setups. The standard ATI high end card can cover everything below that. NVs standard high end card can't.

Blacklash

06-05-11, 12:30 AM

580s OC fine.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=268984&page=9

I see them from 960-1060 all the time on air or water. An HD 6970 @ 1000 on the core is slower than the 580 @ 915 never mind 960.

AMD GPUs are excelling in some benches recently because end users are lowering or even disabling tessellation from the CCC. They have a slider for that now. The user may select the factor.

Bah!

06-05-11, 12:31 AM

**EDITED BY DD**

Ninja Prime

06-05-11, 04:17 AM

Can they handle PhysX? Can they handle 3d on computer monitors? 3d on 3 monitors? Forcing ambient occlusion?

Yeah, they can do Physx, hell the 3870 could. NV just doesn't allow it. Yeah on 3d, and yeah on 3 monitors. Theoretically if they bothered to add a crappy feature like forced AO in games that are not designed for it, they could. Nothing really stops ATI from it, they just don't see the value, and neither do I.

So what you're saying is ATi's highest end cards can't handle the highest end display solutions? Are you sure there aren't 57X12 settings with high AA that don't exceed the 2GB limitation?

Yep. Niether can a standard high end NV card. Of course that assumes the highest settings in high memory useage games. NVs 3GB aftermarket cards can claim that tiny 0.000001% of the market. Grats.

Like most ATi fanATics, your only point is "Gee, ATi makes a couple cards with 2GB of VRAM. We're not going to compare them to the NVIDIA cards with 2 or 3GB of VRAM, we're just going to point out that if you compare them to the 1.5GB cards, and use fairly rare 57X12 display sets with the AA cranked up there are some games where you'll exceed the 1.5GB!"

All the while totally ignoring you could use 2 X 2GB GTX560Tis like I do to get a better gaming experience than two 2GB 6950s,

No you wouldn't. 6950s would be faster.

or 2 X 3GB GTX580s to get a better experience than 2 X 2GB 6970s.

Yep, for the low price of about twice what the 6970s would cost, you could in fact be slightly faster and have enough ram for those one in a million 3x2560x1600 setups. Twice the money, tiny bit faster, grats.

Why don't you two just have sex and be done with it?

Seriously, you're both ****ing idiots and are ruining yet another thread.

I know you have your panties in a twist about me brah! but if you look above you'll see that Trollo here was the one that wandered off on a "ATI cards are bad!!111oneone" tangent.

Muppet

06-05-11, 05:11 AM

I'm hoping Bulldozer is all that some people believe it will be. But in reality. I honestly thing Sandybridge-E will be faster.

Rollo

06-05-11, 07:33 AM

I'm hoping Bulldozer is all that some people believe it will be. But in reality. I honestly thing Sandybridge-E will be faster.

I honestly think my 990X will be faster. However, I think AMD can still compete by being close and pricing appropriately.

Back in the Athlon days I bought AMD and put up with strange motherboards just to support competition in direct response to Intel's pricing on PIIs.

grey_1

06-05-11, 10:03 PM

Wow, I kind of expected to see Gulftown v.s. Zambezi stuff in a thread titled Gulftown v.s. Zambezi, not another idiotic :fanboy: thread.

Hopefully this BD delay doesn't mean another Barcelona, I'm itching to see some competition again.

Yep, me too. I'll be getting at least an 1155 setup, but I'm holding off until I see everything that's coming soon and what it can do.

grey_1

06-06-11, 11:20 AM

Guess who's fault was that, again? :headexplode:

Yeah, that wasn't clear in my post. I agree - and this is getting ridiculous.

Rollo - people are going to like and are going to use what they like regardless of how hard you push any other product. I've chatted with numerous other people who don't even want to bother with gfx or other forums you get going in. Do the math.

DiscipleDOC

06-06-11, 11:49 AM

Yet another thread that I have to play babysitter. This is getting really old, really fast.

grey_1

06-06-11, 11:51 AM

Yet another thread that I have to play babysitter. This is getting really old, really fast.